Adoption and the Dead or Alive Card

When adoptees speak out and share our feelings or the need for reform in the institution of adoption, people soon pull out the dead or alive card.

It goes like this:

“Just be glad you’re alive.”

Or

“Just be glad you’re not dead.”

Okaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay….

Doesn’t that apply to anybody and everybody on the planet?

Any of my friends could be dead or alive -- adopted or not.

But people love to pull the dead or alive card on us. If all else fails and they don’t like whatever it is that we’re sharing the ol’ “just be glad you’re not dead” card is pretty standard.

And know this, adoptee…when a person pulls the dead or alive card on you, it means they have run out of anything intelligent to say.

This dead or alive card is code for: “You’re making great points and I can’t refute them with anything that actually makes sense. All I know is you are making me so uncomfortable, so I thought I’d just remind you that you should be glad you aren’t dead.”

It would be laughable if this dead or alive argument weren’t so common!

When people remind me how glad I should be that I’m alive, I smile and say, “You too!” And they look at me so perplexed. As if only adopted people have the potential to be dead.

*Photo Courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net

    

When Adoptees Are Chastised to "Just Be Grateful"

Adoptees are often chastised that we just need to be thankful or grateful, particularly when we share our feelings or speak out for reform in adoption.

A reader posted this at the Adoptee Restoration Facebook page this week:

 

In answering Elizabeth’s question, I want to share with you one of the most important truths I know.

Things People Say to Adopted People

Being a pastor, I have a front row seat into people’s lives both good and bad. I rejoice with them in good times and weep with them in times of sorrow.

Photo Credit: ST33VO, Flickr

I’ve comforted a lot of people as they have received news of everything from a death in the family to a diagnosis of cancer. 

With all of these tragedies, I can safely tell you that I have never said things like:

When People Dismiss Your Story

Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners are a painful  memory for a dear friend of mine, who happens to be a woman in ministry.

My friend comes from a very large, religious family. Every holiday the parents and grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins would gather for the family dinner. Following  the meal, all of the women in the family would retreat to the kitchen where they would spend time putting the leftovers away in Tupperware containers.  

Photo Credit: vxla, Flickr

Organizing into an assembly line of sorts they would proceed to wash and dry all of the china and put it back in the cabinet. With the dishes back in order, they would gather up all the linens to launder them and begin to put the dining room back in order. This would take quite a while with such a large family and all that went into the elaborate dinners.

While all the ladies in the family were busy as bees accomplishing these tasks after the meal, my friend was in another area of the house...

with her grandfather…

who was raping her.